The FreeAgent Blog

Keeping your customers happy is one of the most fundamental - and sometimes challenging - parts of running a business. But how do you ensure that you keep your standards of customer service high? Here are some of our favourite examples of forward-thinking businesses that went above and beyond for their customers - and reaped the benefits.

Is there an awesome example of great customer service that you think we’ve missed? Hit us up on twitter or leave a comment and let us now. And have a great weekend!

In our ongoing quest to demystify accounting, we’ve released a new tool to calculate whether your business could save money on the VAT Flat Rate Scheme.

The calculator started life as a Hack Week project, but we felt it was so useful that we needed some extra time to polish it before launch.

What is the VAT flat rate scheme anyway?

When you're on the VAT flat rate scheme, instead of adding up all the output VAT you've charged and taking off all the input VAT you can reclaim, you work out the amount that you pay to HMRC in a different way.

You add up all your sales for each quarter, including the output VAT you charged to your customers. This total figure is called your "flat rate turnover".

When you’re adding up your sales to work out your flat rate turnover, you must include all your sales except those that are outside the scope of UK VAT. That means you must also include any exempt sales and zero-rated sales.

Once you've worked out your flat rate turnover for the quarter, you multiply that by the appropriate flat rate percentage. The flat rate percentages are set by HMRC.

The percentages are different depending on your business’s trade. This is because you can't usually reclaim input VAT when you’re using the flat rate scheme, except in certain circumstances like when you buy a large item of equipment. 

For more information on the VAT Flat Rate Scheme see this article.

Will it save me money?

HMRC designed the scheme to make record-keeping easier for small businesses rather than to save them money, so the percentages are set to compensate for the amount of input VAT that a business would typically be able to claim.

But sometimes businesses can save some money by using the flat rate scheme, which is why we built the FreeAgent VAT Flat Rate Calculator.

Simply enter the numbers from last year's VAT return and the calculator will tell you what you would have paid on the Flat Rate Scheme, and if it could save you money.

Try the VAT Flat Rate Scheme Calculator now.

“Big Data” is a big trend for 2013, but what does it really mean for your businesses? This week we’re looking at some of the surprising ways that businesses (and political campaigns) use data to stand out from the competition, make their employees happy, or just improve their bottom line.

Are you running a data-driven business? Drop us a comment or a tweet to let us know, and have a great weekend!

The FreeAgent team is out on the road again this month - and among our upcoming events, we’re thrilled to be part of the upcoming 2013 Finovate Europe conference.

It’s a great event to be involved with. Many of the top names in the financial and banking sectors will be in London for the two-day conference, so we’ll be rubbing shoulders some movers and shaker and checking out some of the exciting new financial technology that’s being developed.

And, most importantly of all, FreeAgent will be one of the 60 leading companies presenting at the event.

We can’t reveal too much about what we’ll be presenting at Finovate, but Ed and I are really looking forward to showing the latest developments within FreeAgent - including our recent announcement on bank feeds - but also some of our thinking on other ways we can expose meaningful insights on businesses for multiple audiences - including some awesome new ways of reporting business data. It’s the kind of thing that the financial sector is sorely lacking right now, so we’re hoping that we’ll raise a few eyebrows and get people talking when they see what FreeAgent has to offer.

If you’re interested in learning more about the event, check out the Finovate Europe website - and, if you’re going to be attending, remember to stop by and say to hi. We’d love to chat.